Money should never be the goal. Pursue what you love doing and do it well. May God bless you with generous reward.

 

It was good to come home refreshed that spring, right before Easter, the flowers in full bloom. Peter and I had just flown back to Pennsylvania after a long-overdue getaway. I was still unpacking when the phone rang. It was his sister calling to say that their mother was in the hospital. “She thought she was having a heart attack,” Peter said when he got off the phone. “But the doctors say it’s an esophageal stricture. She’s fine, nothing serious…but she wants me to fly out to Chicago to see her.”

My mother-in-law relied heavily on Peter, who responded like a good son to her every summons. I understood Peter wanting to do all he could for her, even if my mother-in-law and I had never been close. But after years of witnessing him never saying no to her, I was running out of patience. For too long I’d watched my husband suffer under the pressure of his mother’s demanding nature. How were we to know when she really needed him? “Call the airline,” I said. “See just how much that roundtrip flight will cost.” I hoped that would settle it.

The last thing Peter needed was unnecessary stress after the tumultuous year he’d had with his own health...read more